FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Campaign episode - Survive, Rain, Fatigue
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

The final stages of development of the first campaign episode - "Survive" - are wrapping up this week. Splendid voice-acting and animation work has made its way from recording & processing into the game - bringing it all to life. Together with our various testing teams, we are playing through the episode many times to find potential issues ahead of the October 31 release. Meanwhile, other members of the team are working on the second episode, previously teased content additions, tools, and a number of unannounced additions.

INTELLIGENCE

Not one, but two Workshop developer favorites have been shared since last week. Artist Martin Valášek put forward 'Metal Clone Boss' by Mr Cookie. Web developer extraordinaire, Jervant Malakjan, landed on 'The Great Altis Highway Race' by ٨ήģεỈ.

The Community Focus widget was refreshed on the main website landing page with a mix of cool user efforts!

To clarify a few things after the campaign release date announcement: it will be a singleplayer-only experience. We've also seen discussions about the scope of gameplay changes based on what was seen in screenshots. Don't expect big core gameplay overhauls released alongside the campaign. As suggested by some of you, the campaign contains a few more 'staged' situations involving custom animation work. That is not to say there will not be a load of cool additions to benefit community designers. Many new animations, sounds and objects can be used; something made easier by the new modules designed by folks like Jiří Wainar.

Scripting documentation continues to be updated via the forums - this week with a suite of inventory-related commands.

OPERATIONS

Today is a pretty big day on devbranch, with us staging the "Survive" sandbox content and new rain technology! By sandbox content we mean the new weapons, characters and static objects - basically everything except for the campaign scenarios themselves. The latter may be staged for a brief period ahead of release, but we are still evaluating that option. If we do, we would kindly ask you to not spoil the experience for others with any discoveries made in devbranch data.

Oh, the new rain is a big step forward if you ask us! This first stage on devbranch finally does away with some of the old rain's limitations. The effect feels more 3D since it uses particles all around you, rather than mixed animated 2D layers. It also factors in occlusion better, so that it does not rain under objects. The way the rain is lit looks especially cool when viewed in front of a vehicle's headlights at night for example.

Following the release of "Survive", we will start a targeted tweaking of fatigue and its effects on devbranch. Some of the prep is done already, but it cannot be rolled out now without risking final testing of the first campaign episode. The goals are to introduce better fatigue calculations so that your equipment has a more authentic bearing on your performance - e.g. running up a significant slope / carrying heavy equipment. Once this gets on devbranch, designer Radko Voda intends to discuss the details on the forums.

LOGISTICS

If you have frequently used devbranch and you experience lag when opening interface menus (such as pressing Esc to open the pause menu) - this may be due to your profile data storage being huge. That, in turn, may have been caused by redundant diagnostics data having been stored while using devbranch. The solution is to create a new profile, but obviously be careful about losing your settings and progress!